Regular readers – happy Mother’s Day mom – may remember that on December 12, 2012, during a 40-day, 40-night junket to Mt. Sinai, Wry Wing Politics heard a voice telling it:
…we pay the folks who make our laws, struggle with our most controversial societal issues, and manage billions of our hard earned tax dollars substantially less than we pay the average sewage worker ($37,000/year), clown ($38,000/year), mall cop ($45,000/year), social worker ($40,000/year), and garbage collector ($43,000/year).
Minnesota’s legislative salaries are set by the Legislature. Obviously, legislators don’t keep their salaries at $31,141 because they think it’s the correct level to draw the best people. They do it because they realize that raising their own salary brings the voters’ wrath. Their salary-related decisionmaking is driven by fear, not an objective market assessment.
This is an area that is ripe for reform. …there must be a way to take legislator salary-setting away from legislators, and stop all of this destructive self-flagellation.
WWP then delivereth stone pixel tablets authoritatively declaring:
Maybe legislators could authorize some kind of independent Legislative Salary Commission to set salaries.
Confronted with the profound wisdom embodied in said stone pixel tablets, legislators saweth the light, and yesterday passed legislation to put on the ballot a state constitutional amendment spinfully titled “Remove Lawmakers’ Power to Set Their Own Pay.”
If ultimately embraced by the Senate and Governor, the ballot measure would ask voters whether the Minnesota Constitution should “be amended to remove state lawmakers’ power to set their own salaries, and instead establish an independent, citizens-only council to prescribe salaries for lawmakers?”
Blogging doesn’t pay much, but the whole omnipotence thing doesn’t suck.
